


it takes two to make a house a home

by goodmorningbeloved (3799steps)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Snowed In, background buckynat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 18:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19323505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3799steps/pseuds/goodmorningbeloved
Summary: “You want hot chocolate?”“Why are you doing this?” Tony mutters, though he’s wrapping the quilt around himself.Maybe I can get you to stop crying so you don’t have to play music to cover it up and I can get some sleep,is Steve’s answer, though it dissolves into,Maybe I can get you to stop crying so you don’t have to play music to cover it up,and then eventually, the closest to the truth,Maybe I can get you to stop crying.He says, “Do you want hot chocolate or not?”-For the prompt:"You locked yourself outside of your apartment and there’s a storm rolling in and I pity you so please come into my apartment I’ll make you hot chocolate?"





	it takes two to make a house a home

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on tumblr as a fill for the [prompt](https://goodmorningbeloved.tumblr.com/post/185780081927/you-locked-yourself-outside-of-your-apartment-and) "You locked yourself outside of your apartment and there’s a storm rolling in and I pity you so please come into my apartment I’ll make you hot chocolate?" but after writing this i . feel like it could turn into More. i'm marking it complete for now because it can be read as a standalone but i might come back and turn this into a WIP we'll see
> 
> title is from ["dearly departed" by shakey graves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkDycke-u6M), while the song referenced in this fic is [ac/dc's fly on the wall](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6Pn_RNT5D4)

Five people move into the apartment next to Steve’s, and this is a problem because five people in a space barely enough for one produces enough noise pollution to rob Steve thirty-six hours of sleep before the week’s even over. “Go away, m’not awake enough for math problems yet,” Bucky groans where he’s burrowed into Natasha’s arms, and Steve only resists throwing his bowl at him because Natasha is there, and Natasha will certainly kill him if he does anything to make them get up before eight in the morning.

So he leaves Bucky’s room to stew alone. From next door, AC/DCrattles their walls with impressive strength, and Steve’s art history thesis and oatmeal sit on the counter, both woefully unfinished. Steve has never considered himself a murderer before, but a sleep-starved-and-starving-in-general-artist on his last dregs of oatmeal isn’t really himself. Plus, it’s December, just nine days before Christmas–can’t his neighbor at least blast Christmas music?

Steve marches up to the wall. He’s not the broadest and he’s broken his knuckles punching plaster before, but it helps that he’s goddamn enraged. He pounds out  _one two three_ hard enough to make the shelves jump too. “Hey! 199!"

The music screams on. Maybe the music has actually broken his eardrums, because he can’t hear anything or anyone else in 199E. Before, there would be copious amounts of banging and clanging. That had been irritating too, but now Steve almost wished for it back instead of the music because the banging and clanging required someone to be doing it. That meant it could stop. But if his idiot neighbors just happened to forget to turn off their stereo before they left their apartment, he could be stuck with a magnitude-8 earthquake all morning.

Taking a deep breath, Steve finds an empty glass from one of their cabinets and returns to his same spot in the wall, where he jams it against plaster and leans in. If his neighbors are in there, he’s going to go over and knock until one of them opens up.

Turns out, someone  _is_  there. It takes Steve two seconds to pick out a sound unique from the music, then a few more seconds for him to recognize it as sniffling.

He jerks back just as the singer screams  _I was— trapped!_  and almost drops and breaks the glass.  _I was caged!_  the music prattles on, and Steve stares at the spot he had been pressed against and imagines someone else sitting on the other side—crying?

The music stops abruptly. In the middle of straightening back up, Steve goes still, half afraid of being heard too. The silence that suddenly falls over the apartment is almost as loud as the music was, somehow, and Steve finds himself even holding his breath to listen.

There’s some shuffling from next door. A pair of quiet footsteps. A door opens, then closes. Steve’s eyes drift to the crack under the front door, where the December light streams in, and watches a shadow pass. But if his neighbor heard him, they apparently have no intention of calling him out on it, because two minutes later they still haven’t rung the bell.

Feeling a little odd-limbed Steve puts the glass away and slides back into his seat by the counter. His oatmeal’s gone cold, surrendered to the winter air. Normally he doesn’t mind – he’s eaten worse – but suddenly it tastes unbearable.

Natasha wanders in from Bucky’s room, yawning and tugging through knots in her hair. He hears the sound of running water somewhere down the hall. “You got 199 to stop?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, spooning through his oatmeal.

“I’ll tell James to find out what’s up. You have any more of that?”

Steve nods towards the the usual cabinet, and Natasha tightens her cardigan around her and reaches up. “Buck’s not here half the time, I don’t think he even knows we got new neighbors,” he mutters, picking up his pencil and trying to remember where he’d been in revisions before the entire morning started falling apart.

Natasha prepares herself a bowl with ease and slides into the stool next to him. “Neighbors? I thought only Stark moved in.”

Steve’s eyebrows twitch. “Stark?”

“Someone from one of James’s engineering classes. He’s mentioned him a few times.”

That would explain why Steve hasn’t run into his circle. Hearing that it’s another student does soften some of Steve’s frustration, but still. Steve’s in the same position, and at least he doesn’t take it out on his neighbors. “Well, does Bucky also know if Stark’s going home soon?” he says dryly.

Natasha lifts an eyebrow. It’s her signature, single-flick look of disappointment. “He was having issues with housing.”

“Isn’t everyone,” Steve mutters, jamming another spoonful of unpleasant oatmeal into his mouth. He feels Natasha’s gaze weigh a little heavier, but then Bucky walks into the kitchen dressed to leave and carrying a duffel bag for his and Natasha’s trip, and Natasha leaves for her turn with the shower. “You know our new neighbor?” Steve asks as Bucky wordlessly reaches for Natasha’s half-finished bowl, the only one who can share her food and live.

“Tony?” Bucky’s reaching for a slice of bread too, because he’s terrible and likes to dip it in oatmeal. “Yeah, why?”

“Do you know what his problem is?”

Bucky shoots him a look that’s unsettling similar to Natasha’s, just a touch more openly stern. “Cut him some slack, Steve.”

Steve resists the urge to throw his hands up because he just wants to  _know_ who his neighbor is and how everyone else seems to already know before him. He forces himself to focus on his paper again, and a few minutes later Natasha wanders back in dressed and buttoned up in her coat. 

“See you in three days, don’t get arrested, don’t burn the house down, don’t die in an alley,” Bucky recites from the door.

“Don’t make it a challenge,” Steve snips. “Bye, Nat.”

Natasha rolls her eyes at them.

It’s snowing outside, but Steve jams his feet into his sneakers and walks them at least down the stairs and to the sidewalk. It’s begun to snow – Bucky and Natasha were lucky enough to catch a train before the storm tonight – and Steve shivers and tucks his arms under his armpits as he watches them climb into Natasha’s car and drive away.

He doesn’t really notice the mess on the curb until Natasha’s car is gone and the garbage bag and broken bed frame are the only things left there. Steve frowns, because they’re right in front of 199E′s apartment. Is  _that_ why Stark was making so much noise?

A movement catches the corner of his eye. Someone’s just rounded the corner, a lanky figure bundled in black, slightly hunched with a phone to his ear. Steve steps aside to let him pass – the guy hardly even notices him – and catches a fragment of the conversation: “I told you, I don’t  _want_ to go back to the house!”

And then Steve keeps hearing it, because this person tromps up the snow-caked steps of 199E and turns out to be his new neighbor.  _Stark,_ Steve thinks, then  _Tony_. He’s probably taller than Steve if he straightens, and his hair’s a mess of waves peppered with snow. He’s wearing a watch that looks as expensive as the unit he’s staying in, glinting in the light with the metal case of a phone pressed to his ear.

“It’s not mine,” Tony snarls into the phone, his other hand furiously digging through his pockets, presumably for his keys. “It was  _their_  house, and I’m not fucking going back so people can pretend they always gave a shit about me. I don’t want their goddamn pity. I’m— No, Obie! I’m not doing it! Just leave me the fuck alone.  _Shit!”_ Tony clicks and jams his phone into his pocket, then grabs the doorknob with both hands and nearly rips it off the door with how hard he shakes it. “Shit!” he shouts again, and Steve watches him drop on the topmost step, his hands flying to his hair and gripping it so hard that Steve sees his knuckles, although blotched red, turn white.

Once again, Steve finds himself pinned in place. This must be how insects feel around Venus fly traps, and he’s going to reconsider the one sitting on his window later.

But then there’s a sniffle. And another. And he realizes that Tony Stark, whoever he is and could possibly be, is crying on his doorstep while a snowstorm brews overhead, and Steve hasn’t been entirely fair.

Steve may regret this. “Hey.”

“Fuck off,” Tony hiccups.

See, it’s already starting. “You shouldn’t sit there. Don’t tell me your ass isn’t soaked through right now.”

Tony’s head remains bowed in his hands. He’s shaking—from the cold, from the anger, from the crying, who knows?

Steve walks back up his side of the steps. “You’re getting snow in your hair,” he says, leaning over the banister that divides Tony’s side of the building from his. His voice softens. “C’mon. I don’t wanna hear you coughing through winter break.”

He unlocks his own door swiftly, stamps the snow off his feet, and walks inside. He waits a few seconds by the open door, counting silently to five before he decides to save himself the heating–

Tony trudges in. His pants  _are_ damp and there are snow-soaked curls clinging to his cheeks and temples, and he’s shivering under a jacket that looks really nice but really thin. Steve shuts the door after him, grabs a quilt strewn on the sofa, and throws it at him. Then he heads for the kitchenette. 

“You want hot chocolate?”

“Why are you doing this?” Tony mutters, though he’s wrapping the quilt around himself.

 _Maybe I can get you to stop crying so you don’t have to play music to cover it up and I can get some sleep_ , is Steve’s answer, though it dissolves into,  _Maybe I can get you to stop crying so you don’t have to play music to cover it up,_ and then eventually, the closest to the truth,  _Maybe I can get you to stop crying._ He says, “Do you want hot chocolate or not?”

Tony does. Minutes later, when Steve puts the steaming mug in front of him, he looks down at it like he’s never seen a goddamn mug of hot chocolate in his life.

“You have to blow on it,” Steve says, in case he really hasn’t. “So you don’t burn your tongue.”

“I know,” Tony says sharply–then flinches a little at himself. He clasps the mug with both hands and starts carefully blowing.

Satisfied for now, Steve works on his own mug, studying the other boy out of the corner of his eye. Tony’s eyes are red-rimmed, though it does nothing to hide the shadows beneath it. His fingers are tinged red all the way down to the first knuckles. He holds himself with his back straight, elbows off the counter, but after the first sip, Steve spies his shoulders begin to hunch.

“Was that your bed outside?” seems safe enough to ask about.

Tony nods. “I fucked it up.” His brow furrows. Yeah, Steve would be frowning too if he just wrecked a perfectly good bed frame.

“'cause you’re going home anyway, or you’re getting a new one?”

“No,” Tony replies. Steve waits for an explanation. Tony takes another sip, and there is none.

“It’s only the sixteenth. The storm’s supposed to pass in four days, there’re still going to be trains–”

“I’m not going home,” Tony cuts in tightly, meeting Steve’s gaze for the first time, and Steve sees that the tell-tale signs of tears also does nothing to dull his eyes, sharp and gleaming brown from the kitchen light.

“All right,” Steve concedes, pinching back the urge to argue. He’s seen that look somewhere before. In himself, maybe, years ago–and even now, when he feels so keenly like the whole world’s against him.

Tony doesn’t let go of his gaze for a good while. When he finally does, his shoulders have tensed again, and he’s drawing both hands from the mug and starting to unbuckle his watch. Steve watches, not entirely processing what’s happening until Tony slides the watch across the counter with a faint rattle. Steve frowns. “What?”

“Take it.” The stool rattles too as Tony stands up. “Thanks for the hot chocolate. I’ll get another key from someone.”

Steve rises after him, feeling a surge of annoyance, or urgency, or both– “I don’t want your damn watch.”

“Just fucking take it,” Tony snaps, and then, “he’s dead now anyway, it doesn’t matter,” and the moment the words leave his mouth, Steve witnesses that wall of anger and hostility crumble away. There’s surprise, there’s terror. Then Tony’s eyebrows draw tightly together, his lips press into a thin, wobbling line, and Steve finally, finally getsit.

“Hey.” He takes a step towards Tony. Tony flinches again, pulling the quilt tighter around himself despite this motions to leave, and Steve freezes so he doesn't bolt. “I’m sorry. For assuming. That’s not– This isn’t how I wanted this to go.” He runs a hand through his own snow-dampened hair, a nervous habit. He’s rarely good with people, especially when sensitive things are involved, but Tony’s here now and Steve can’t just  _not_ do anything. “You can leave if you want, but it’s getting really bad out there and the housing office shut down earlier for the storm, and I’d feel a lot better if you were in here instead of out there.”

“Why?” Tony asks immediately. He hasn’t surrendered his mistrust yet, made evident by the way his eyes flick from Steve, to the door, to Steve again.

“I remember when my ma died,” Steve admits quietly. It’s the first time he’s spoken the words out loud, and he has to take a deep breath in before he can go on, “I didn’t wanna be alone. Don’t think you should be, either.”

It takes a long time for Tony to move: he nods mutely, takes an uncertain step forward. Steve sees him start unwrapping the quilt from around himself and shakes his head, moving to intercept Tony. When he reaches up to guide Tony’s hands back around his shoulders, Tony’s shaking a little. “Sorry,” Tony whispers. He looks different this close. “Sorry about your mom.”

“Not your fault,” Steve tells him, in a voice so soft that it doesn’t feel like it’s his. “You wanna sit?”

Tony shifts, looking away first. “I’m going to get your sofa wet.”

“Then you better keep the blanket.”

Tony hesitates only for a moment before moving to the sofa, the quilt still clutched tightly around his shoulders. When Steve brings their mugs over and sits in the seat next to him, Tony doesn’t move away. “Thanks,” he mumbles when Steve hands him his mug. “I’m. I’m Tony, by the way.”

“Steve,” Steve returns.

Tony gives him a smile. It’s small, and it doesn’t entirely reach his eyes, but Steve gets it. When Steve asks if he wants to talk, Tony shakes his head wordlessly, and Steve gets that too.

Steve watches him turn his face to the window. The snow’s picking up now, that blinding white flurry clinging to the glass and its light softening Tony’s features.

Tony stays. When he drifts off, head tilted into a cushion, empty mug in his lap, Steve adjusts Sarah Rogers’s quilt more securely over his shoulders, says nothing, and stays with him.


End file.
